This patent document relates to the generation, transmission and reception of encrypted multimedia data.
Internet Protocol (IP) is fast becoming the transport format of choice for delivering audio/video to users. The delivery may occur, for example, over communications networks such as wired (cable model or digital subscriber loop) or wireless (3G, 4G, Wi-Fi etc.) networks. However, to ensure a high quality of service, several operational challenges need to be overcome. For example, often users are inside a firewall and/or gateway, e.g., a corporate firewall or a network gateway server and special techniques may have to be used to ensure delivery of multimedia content through such IP network elements. Furthermore, multimedia content is typically encrypted. Hypertext transport protocol (HTTP) is fast becoming a protocol of choice for delivering or streaming multimedia content to users.
Improvements are needed to IP delivery of encrypted multimedia data.